Handbook of Herbal Formulation

Herbal formulations play a significant role in maintaining health. The variety of novel herbal formulations like polymeric nanoparticles, nanocapsules, liposomes, phytosomes, nanoemulsions, microsphere, transferosomes, and ethosomes has been reported using bioactive and plant extracts. Novel herbal formulations have various advantages over the traditional formulations such as improved solubility and bioavailability, reduced toxicity, controlled drug delivery, protections of plant actives from degradation. This book comprises many units — the first unit is well laid out and sequentially explores relevant topics like herbal formulation, definitions, classification, traditional vs modern herbal formulation and herbal dosage forms. The details about formulation consideration of herbal dosage form, it provides number of examples of herbal excipient like colorants, flavouring agent with their evaluation guidelines. The chapter also contains comparison between herbal conventional formulation as well as herbal novel drug delivery. Chapter 4 focuses on intellectually property rights and patenting of herbal formulations covering concepts of IPR, regulatory issues and documentation of patenting herbal formulations. The information presented in Chapters 5 and 6 primarily deal with nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals herbal based formulation. Chapter 5 provides information on health benefits of nutraceuticals, regulatory requirements and worldwide scenario of nutraceuticals. The next informative topics are evaluation of quality, efficacy and safety of herbal formulation, their quality consideration, efficacy assessment and safety concern of herbal formulation. The concise text containing status of herbal formulation related to trading, export and import, global market of herbal formulation. The relevant piece of information is herbal drugs commonly used for formulation developments including name of drug, active constituents and pharmacological efficacy. In addition, book contains specific text on bioavailability of herbals, mechanism of action, ideal property of bioenhancer and herbs, source, mechanism and their dose as bioenhancers. The current need is pharmacovigilance of herbal medicines, challenges in monitoring safety of herbal medicines and WHO drug monitoring program.